Community Organising Course

Lesson 1 • Major Organising Traditions

Surveys broad-based, faith-based, labour, and movement-based traditions. Helps students identify which model fits a given community context.

Lesson 2 • Defining Community Organising

Clarifies what organising is and is not by contrasting it with service delivery and advocacy. Establishes shared vocabulary used throughout the course.

Lesson 3 • Core Values and Principles

Examines the ethical commitments that guide organising decisions. Students apply these principles to distinguish effective from exploitative practice.

Lesson 1 • Applying Power Analysis to Strategy

Connects power mapping and self-interest findings to concrete strategic choices. Students draft a preliminary strategy memo based on their analysis.

Lesson 2 • Mapping Power in a Community

Teaches systematic methods for identifying who holds power and how it flows. Students produce a stakeholder power map for a real or simulated community.

Lesson 3 • Uncovering Self-Interest

Distinguishes self-interest from selfishness and shows how it drives participation. Students practice surfacing self-interest through structured conversation.

Lesson 1 • Anatomy of a One-on-One Meeting

Breaks down the structure, purpose, and flow of a one-on-one conversation. Students learn to move from rapport to self-interest to ask within a single meeting.

Lesson 2 • Why Relationships Are the Foundation

Explains why durable organising is built on trust rather than transactions. Connects relationship quality to long-term organisational resilience.

Lesson 3 • Identifying and Developing Leaders

Teaches criteria for spotting potential leaders during one-on-ones. Students practice moving from identification to initial leadership development conversations.

Lesson 4 • Building a Relational Database

Introduces systems for tracking relationships, commitments, and follow-up. Students design a simple contact management workflow for their organisation.

Lesson 1 • Connecting Issues to Long-Term Vision

Shows how individual campaign wins contribute to a broader theory of change. Students articulate how their selected issue advances organisational power.

Lesson 2 • Prioritising Among Multiple Issues

Provides tools for choosing among competing issue priorities when resources are limited. Students use a weighted decision matrix to select a campaign focus.

Lesson 3 • Issue Cutting and Framing

Teaches how to narrow a broad problem into a specific, actionable demand. Students practice reframing issues to maximise resonance and clarity.

Lesson 4 • What Makes a Good Organising Issue

Introduces criteria for evaluating potential issues: winnable, specific, and unifying. Students apply criteria to distinguish strong issues from weak ones.

Lesson 1 • Building a Campaign Timeline

Introduces backward planning from a campaign deadline to daily tasks. Students construct a milestone-based timeline for their campaign plan.

Lesson 2 • Identifying Targets and Decision Makers

Teaches how to identify the person with actual authority to grant the demand. Students distinguish primary targets from secondary targets and pressure points.

Lesson 3 • Setting Campaign Goals and Demands

Distinguishes organisational goals from campaign demands and explains why both matter. Students draft specific, measurable demands for their campaign.

Lesson 4 • Coalition Building for Campaigns

Covers how to recruit and manage coalition partners to amplify campaign power. Students map potential allies and draft a coalition engagement strategy.

Lesson 1 • Negotiation and Accountability Meetings

Prepares students to lead formal meetings with decision makers to secure commitments. Students role-play a negotiation meeting and evaluate outcomes.

Lesson 2 • Action Planning and Logistics

Covers the operational details that determine whether an action succeeds or fails. Students complete a full action planning checklist for a simulated event.

Lesson 3 • The Action Debrief

Introduces structured debrief methodology to extract lessons from every action. Students conduct a debrief using a standard protocol and document findings.

Lesson 4 • Principles of Effective Public Action

Explains what makes a public action powerful: clear ask, visible numbers, and media potential. Students evaluate past actions against these criteria.

Lesson 1 • Organisational Governance Models

Compares governance structures used by community organisations. Students evaluate trade-offs between democratic participation and operational efficiency.

Lesson 2 • Theories of Leadership Development

Surveys models of leadership development used in organising contexts. Students compare models and select one appropriate for their organisational context.

Lesson 3 • Organisational Culture and Health

Examines how internal culture affects recruitment, retention, and effectiveness. Students assess their organisation's culture and identify improvement priorities.

Lesson 4 • Sustaining Volunteer Engagement

Addresses the challenge of retaining and motivating unpaid leaders over time. Students design a recognition and re-engagement system for their organisation.

Lesson 1 • Long-Term Strategic Planning

Introduces multi-year strategic planning processes suited to organising contexts. Students draft a three-year strategic framework for their organisation.

Lesson 2 • Scaling and Replication Strategies

Examines how successful organising models expand geographically or sectorally. Students evaluate scaling options against their organisation's capacity and values.

Lesson 3 • Evaluation Methods and Learning Cycles

Covers practical evaluation tools that organisers can use without external evaluators. Students design a simple evaluation cycle tied to their campaign plan.

Lesson 4 • Measuring Organising Effectiveness

Introduces metrics for tracking relational, campaign, and organisational progress. Students select and define indicators appropriate for their organisational context.